He bows again and produces a roll of manuscript from his sleeve. “The stars suggest the first week in September,” he says. “I have drawn the alignments for you to study. I know that you take an interest in such work.”

“I do.” He puts the papers on the table at my side. “And what do you think when you see these princesses?” I ask him. “You see them here with their little coronels on their heads, as Tudor princesses.”

“I think they can have nothing but glory ahead of them,” he says tactfully. He smiles at Elizabeth’s dazzled face. “Who can doubt but that you will both reign over a great country?”

Mary smiles; of course she hopes for an alliance with Spain. But Elizabeth has ambitions in her own right. She watches me command the Privy Council, she watches me take reports from all around England. She is learning that a woman can educate herself, follow her own determination, command others. “Will I?” she whispers.

I wonder what he really thinks, what he can really see. I nod to Elizabeth and Mary, and they withdraw from the table as Nicholas Kratzer produces another roll from his satchel.

“I have drawn up your chart,” he says. “I am honored that you show such a gracious interest in my poor work.”

I rise from my chair as he spreads the document on the table and anchors it, as before, with the little gold models of the planets. “These are pretty things,” I say, as if I am not longing to see what he has drawn for me.

“They are paperweights,” he says. “Not charms, of course. But they please me.”

“And what do you see for me?” I ask him quietly. “Between the two of us, and speaking to no other—what do you see for me?”

He points to the sign for my house, the feathered helmet. “I see you were married as a young woman to a young man.” He shows me the markings that indicate the early years of my life. “The stars say you were a child, as innocent as they.”

I smile. “Yes, it was like that, perhaps.”

“Then before you were much more than twenty years old, you were married again, to a man old enough to be your father, and you faced great danger.”

“The Pilgrimage of Grace,” I confirm. “The rebels came to our castle and put it under siege. They took me and his children hostage.”

“You must have known they would never hurt you,” he says.

I knew it then. But the king justified his cruelty to the North on the basis of wild reports of savagery. “They were treasonous,” I say, rather than answering him honestly. “At any rate, they were hanged for treason.”

“You were married for nearly ten years,” he says, showing me the barred lines on the chart. “And no child ever born to you.”